Search engines are now commonplace in many software applications. Search engines may be used for searching for text strings in applications such as word processors, help information in software applications as varied as spreadsheets and operating systems, and references and other documents. The accuracy of any one search may be judged by whether the top few returned documents are the documents actually sought by the user using the search engine. Thus, the returned list must have relevance to the search terms used in the search.
Search results that are irrelevant to the user are undesirable because the user may find herself wasting time sorting through documents that do not have applicability to either her or her computing environment. Ranking mechanisms are typically employed to rank the returned data from a search so that the most relevant documents are listed first. However, the ranking system may not perform well unless the ranking has some correlation to the context of the request for information. Some returned information is so irrelevant to the context of the user in her computing environment that it should be completely eliminated from the returned search list. Other returned search data may have increased relevance because the user may be searching for a way to better utilize the computing environment in which she is operating. Thus, an understanding of the computing environment may provide an insight into the context of a users search.
It is desirable for a search engine to have a capability to include context information concerning the computing environment in which the search is conducted. Thus, there is a need for a system and method to include context into search results so as to provide a computer user results which may be more relevant to his needs. The present invention addresses the aforementioned needs and solves them with additional advantages as expressed herein.